Anritsu Corp. is on the verge of releasing a so-called "stressed eye" tester for subsystems and components meant to be receivers inside routers and switches. The term "stressed eye" refers to measurements of optical signal strength when test gear pounds 10-Gbit/s components and systems in preset ways -- ways defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) as part of its 802.3ae specifications for 10-Gbit/s Ethernet finalized last year.

Up to now, just three vendors have offered stressed-eye testers for receiver modules: Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A), Circadiant Systems, and JDS Uniphase Corp. (Nasdaq: JDSU; Toronto: JDU) (see Casting a 'Stressed Eye' on 10G Tests). Anritsu's entrance into the commercial market signals greater demand for this kind of tester. Anritsu claims to have prototypes working in live customers labs, and a source at the vendor says general shipment is "nearly ready."

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) announced on May 6 a 10-Gbit/s serial BERT tester that monitors and reports on the electrical characteristics of components and subsystems, such as line cards, that use serial transmission (see Agilent Unleashes Serial Killer). Examples include the inner workings of Infiniband, RapidIO, and Hypertransport buses, which are used to create faster links inside equipment used in storage area networks and data centers (see Dueling Interconnects Unmasked) -- precisely the areas where 10-Gbit/s Ethernet is widely expected to emerge first. Prospective users include makers of Fibre Channel switches, 10-Gbit/s Ethernet switches and routers, and next-gen Sonet gear. This is strictly a physical-layer tester, so the specific protocol involved doesn't matter.

Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA) announced on May 6 a 10-Gbit/s module for use in its upper-layer tester chassis. Unlike stressed eye testers, Ixia's gear is focused on the performance of 10-Gbit/s data in systems, not subsystems or components.

The new Ixia test module is meant to work as one of many modules crammed into a single chassis in "mix and match" fashion, which Ixia says saves money for developers and end users. The module packs a range of 10-Gbit/s tests in one unit (see Ixia Gooses Its Testers), which gauges the performance of OC192 Packet over Sonet and 10-Gbit/s LAN and WAN interfaces, as well as adding a BERT (Bit Error Rate Tester) for 10-Gbit/s links. Ixia plans more 10-Gbit/s product announcements for the upcoming Supercomm 2003 tradeshow in Atlanta.

Finisar Corp. (Nasdaq: FNSR) on April 29 unveiled the Xgig BERT, designed to measure the integrity of data traveling on 10-Gbit/s Ethernet channels and DWDM metro rings. The Xgig doesn't offer the signal measurements that a stressed-eye tester does, but instead focuses on generating specific bit patterns and rates to make sure equipment can keep data traffic flowing without errors. Finisar says the tester can be hooked up to an oscilloscope to create a kind of stressed-eye tester.

Spirent Communications on April 29 joined with Foundry Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FDRY) in a high-octane 10-Gbit/s Ethernet demonstration at the Networld+Interop tradeshow in Las Vegas (see Foundry, Spirent Demo 10-Gig Testbed). Spirent used its SmartBits TeraMetrics 10GbE Test System, which includes a range of performance analysis capabilities, to send up to 1.28 Tbit/s, or 480 million packets per second, "roughly equivalent to 180,000 simultaneous streaming DVD sessions," to Foundry's gear. Spirent says it already has over 100 customers of its 10-Gbit/s Ethernet test gear worldwide and that the demo proved the technology's readiness for hefty applications like grid computing and streaming video.

Innocor Ltd. announced on April 25 the first shipment of a new multi-rate module for its 10-Gbit/s test card to a "major" but unnamed Canadian telecom equipment manufacturer (see Innocor Ships Test Solution). Innocor's module lets users configure via software the optical features of a range of interfaces, including OC3 (STM1), OC12 (STM4), OC48 (STM16), and Gigabit Ethernet.